Radeon HD 4850 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features core speeds of 970 MHz on the GPU, and 1425 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (73%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 380 2G should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
	Difference: 118848 (187%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (more or less 335%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83640 (335%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 2G is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21040 (210%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.